Page 30 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

Three days later

National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham

Even as a child, Poe had never taken an interest in nerd culture.

He hadn’t queued to watch Back to the Future .

Jurassic Park passed him by. Men in Black had sounded silly.

He’d not seen Star Wars until Bradshaw had made him watch it on the Spring-heeled Jack stakeout.

She’d made him watch all eleven films in the franchise.

Eleven . Nine films and two spinoffs. It had taken two whole days.

Poe didn’t even do things he liked for that long.

And when the people who’d had nosebleeds as kids inherited the earth, when weird became the new black, he still didn’t take an interest. That was because the people who obsessed over continuity errors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe tended not to be serial killers.

He figured they vented their cruelty on elves and goblins and people Bradshaw referred to as non-player characters.

Apparently, that meant any character controlled by the game, not the players.

Poe had immediately tried to forget that.

Which was why he hadn’t known what to expect. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d have figured it would be a slightly bigger version of the Warlocks & Witches games that Bradshaw and her weird little pals played.

But stepping into the National Exhibition Centre was a shock to his system.

Sensory overload. Like he’d been hit in the face by a nerdstick.

He’d thought the sniper situation might have kept them away.

It hadn’t. There were screens to protect the outside queue, and security checks were taking place inside the NEC rather than at the entrance, but the exhibition centre was rammed.

Poe had never seen so many misfits, outsiders and flat-out wackadoodle crackpots in one place. And he’d once spent a week in Brighton.

Intense men and women, over-stimulated children.

Pasty faces and serious expressions. People queuing to get merchandise signed by washed-up Z-list actors.

Displays of movie props, of backdrops. Hundreds of stalls.

Food stands. Face-in-the-hole boards, the kind usually seen at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

And everyone was dressed up. Overweight men in Spider-Man costumes, underweight men in Hulk costumes.

Women dressed as Princess Leia (always the slave Leia, Poe noticed), women dressed as Wonder Woman.

A hundred other characters Poe didn’t recognise.

Men drank from horns, like they’d pillaged Lindisfarne.

It was louder than the bar at an airport departure lounge.

‘Blimey,’ he said to Bradshaw. ‘This is insane.’

‘Conventions like this are a complex network of interconnected and overlapping subcultures, Poe,’ she replied, adjusting her elf wings. ‘It’s a chance for fans, game makers, creators of comic books, movies, TTRPGs and a hundred other subsets to mingle without being mocked by people like . . .’

‘Like me?’

Bradshaw shrugged. ‘A few years ago, yes,’ she said. ‘But you’re far more tolerant now. You’ve only laughed at my wings once today.’

‘But?’

‘But there are still a lot of bullies in the world, Poe.’

Poe nodded. He knew that to be true. ‘It’s a safe space,’ he said at last.

Bradshaw didn’t respond. She was being unusually quiet.

He thought she’d have been fizzing with excitement.

He’d had a sneaking suspicion that insisting they must attend the event in person was a ruse.

She asked him to go to things like this with her at least twice a year and he always found a reason not to.

But he was here now, and for some reason it seemed she didn’t want to be.

He’d seen her pick up, then discard, a flyer for light-sabre lessons.

She was being very un-Bradshaw-like. He wondered why that was.

‘What’s the plan then?’ he asked. ‘Split up, get their mailing lists then head over to one of the hog-roast stalls? Get some roast pork and a drinking horn of mead?’

‘They won’t give you their mailing lists, Poe. They can’t, legally.’

‘Then why—’

‘I’ll get their mailing lists. I’ve already downloaded most of them.’

‘Legally?’

‘Do you care, Poe?’ she replied, her voice curiously flat.

‘Not even a little bit. What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Okaaaay,’ he said, drawing it out. ‘If we don’t need to be here to get their mailing lists, why have we trekked all the way to Birmingham?’

‘I don’t know all the games, Poe. I know the established ones and almost all of the newer ones.’

‘But there are some you don’t know?’

‘This convention is where brand new games are premiered,’ she said. ‘Games in beta development. It’s where people look for start-up capital. These are the ones we need to get information on. They’ll all have websites. If we pick up their details, I can get their mailing lists and backers.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said. ‘You go left, I’ll go right. Meet back here in an hour? See which areas we still haven’t covered.’

Bradshaw bit her bottom lip and said, ‘OK, Poe.’

She walked off without another word.